Taryn Simon was born in New York in 1975. Her most recent work, Contraband, which includes 1075 photographs of items detained or seized from passengers and express mail entering the U.S. from abroad, exposes the desires and demands that drive the international economy as well as the local economies that produce them. Her previous work, An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, reveals that which is integral to America's foundation, mythology and daily functioning, but remains inaccessible or unknown to a public audience.

Her earlier work, The Innocents, documents cases of wrongful conviction in the United States and investigates photography's role in that process. Simon's photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo shows at: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum Fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. Permanent collections include: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum Fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Brown University and a Guggenheim Fellow. Simon has been a visiting artist at Yale University, Bard College, Harvard University and Columbia University. Her photography and writing have been featured in numerous publications and broadcasts including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Ted.com, CNN, BBC and Frontline. Steidl published An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar as well as Simon’s most recent work, Contraband, which was released in September 2010. Additionally, Simon is currently working on a global project that will be exhibited and published in Spring 2011 at the Tate Modern, London and the Neue Nationalegalerie, Berlin. Simon will be exhibiting a new work at the Venice Biennale 2011. She is represented by Gagosian Gallery & by Almine Rech Gallery in Paris and Brussels.

Terry O'Neill is an English photographer, who achieved his greatest success documenting the fashion style, and celebrities of the 1960s. He attracted attention for photographing his subjects in unconventional or candid settings.

He began his photographic career working for a photographic unit for an airline at London's Heathrow Airport. By chance he photographed a sleeping figure in a waiting room; when the person was revealed to be the Home Secretary, O'Neill found further employment on Fleet Street with The Daily Sketch in 1959.

His reputation grew during the 1960s, and in addition to photographing the elite the decade's showbusiness icons, such as Judy Garland, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, he also photographed members of the British Royal Family, and several prominent politicians, showing a more natural and human side to these subjects than had usually been portrayed before.

He had a longtime relationship with the American actress Faye Dunaway. His son with Dunaway, Liam Dunaway O'Neill, was born in 1980. O'Neill was married to Dunaway from 1983 until 1986. In 2003, he was quoted in the U.S. tabloid magazine, Star, as saying Liam was adopted and not their biological son, contrary to Dunaway's public assertions. Terry O'Neill is currently married to the former model agency head Laraine Ashton.

The Lunar New Year begins on Thursday, February 3, 2011, though dancing, fireworks and other celebrations to usher in the Year of the Rabbit started the day before, in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Singapore and many other cities around the world.